With a projected market value of US $6.7 billion by 2032, AP automation is quickly becoming essential for companies aiming to streamline accounts payable, save time, cut costs, and reduce errors.
In this blog post, we’ll focus on how automating AP (accounts payable) in JD Edwards can transform your daily AP operations. You’ll learn why an embedded AP automation solution outperforms standalone systems and how it helps accounts payable departments shift from manual work to high-value, efficiency-driven activities
What Is Accounts Payable Automation?
A solution to revolutionize your AP operations.
Accounts payable (AP) automation transforms how finance teams operate by eliminating manual processes and reliance on paper invoices. It replaces time-consuming tasks with invoice process automation, allowing companies to streamline invoice handling, optimize financial operations, and improve collaboration across teams.
Our clients who adopted AP automation embedded in Oracle JD Edwards achieved up to 80% higher efficiency.
>>> See how Viva Energy increased efficiency by 99% with AP automation
While traditional AP practices once served businesses well, today’s pace of growth demands a smarter approach. Implementing AP automation goes beyond replacing outdated methods; it delivers measurable cost savings, reduces data entry errors, drives overall efficiency, and offers better cash flow management.
By freeing teams from repetitive, manual work, organizations can focus on strategic, high-value activities. This shift drives faster scalability, long-term growth, and a true accounts payable process transformation.
What Are the Benefits of Automating AP?
Experience an 80% increase in efficiency
Accounts payable (AP) automation delivers a wide range of advantages, from greater efficiency, time savings, and cost reduction to stronger vendor relationships and full process visibility. Let’s explore how invoice process automation in JD Edwards transforms the way AP teams work:
Streamlined Workflows
AP automation eliminates repetitive manual work by automating invoice processing in JD Edwards from capture to approval. This streamlining empowers the AP team personnel to focus on high-value tasks and strategic decision-making instead of data entry and chasing approvals.
Fortified Compliance and Audit Trails
By standardizing workflows and maintaining detailed audit trails, automation ensures every transaction complies with internal policies and external regulations. This visibility and control also strengthen fraud prevention, reducing the risk of unauthorized payments or data manipulation.
Such control is essential for companies managing high invoice volumes across multiple entities, ensuring compliance, security, and accountability at every step of the AP automation process.
Enhanced Visibility and Control
Automation provides real-time visibility and insight into invoice status, payments, and approval stages. With clear tracking and reporting, AP teams can identify bottlenecks early and take proactive action to maintain smooth cash flow.
Improved Accuracy
Manual data entry often introduces costly errors. With an invoice processing automation software, organizations can automatically capture and validate invoice data, ensuring precision and consistency across all AP operations.
Better Vendor Relationships
AP Automation ensures timely payments to suppliers, which reduces delays, fosters stronger vendor relationships, and offers better terms.
Exception Handling
AP automation flags missing information, duplicate invoices, pricing discrepancies, or deviations from established business rules. The system promptly alerts approvers, guaranteeing quick resolution of exceptions without hindering the workflow.
Overall Improved Efficiency
By digitizing and optimizing every step of the accounts payable process, AP automation drives measurable improvements in performance. It’s not just about faster processing; it’s about enabling a full accounts payable process transformation, where teams achieve greater accuracy, visibility, and strategic focus.
What Are the Features of AP Automation? What Tasks Can You Automate?
Effortless Efficiency: automate error-prone operations
AP automation solutions like SCANMAN AP Automation deliver a seamless, touchless AP automation process. Fully embedded within the Oracle JD Edwards E1 environment, SCANMAN automates every stage of invoice processing, from data capture and matching to approval and posting. This ensures accuracy, compliance, and complete control over your automated AP operations, eliminating the need for manual intervention and disconnected tools.
Below are the key features and tasks that invoice process automation software like SCANMAN can handle, driving a full accounts payable process transformation for your organization.
Data Recognition
Modern AP automation software uses intelligent data recognition to process invoices received in multiple formats, PDFs, XML, emails, and scanned images. Leveraging Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and AI, the system identifies key invoice details such as vendor names, amounts, and dates. This marks the first step in the AP automation process, minimizing manual input and improving accuracy across your automated AP operations.
Invoice Matching
With invoice process automation, purchase order–based invoices are automatically matched against their corresponding POs (two-way matching) or against both the PO and goods receipt (three-way matching). This functionality is essential because it validates each supplier invoice for accuracy before payment. By automating this step, your AP team only intervenes for exceptions, significantly reducing manual review time and speeding up approvals.
Approval Workflows
Automation enables faster invoice approvals through predefined workflows that reflect your organization’s hierarchy, approval thresholds, and compliance rules. These workflows trigger alerts or notifications to approvers, helping maintain momentum throughout the AP process. The result is shorter cycle times, better control, and improved collaboration between departments, all core benefits of automated AP operations.
Integration with JD Edwards
AP automation software must seamlessly integrate with JD Edwards, ensuring master data stays current, approved invoices are recorded in real time, and payments are scheduled according to your organization’s terms. SCANMAN delivers a fully embedded Oracle accounts payable automation solution that connects directly within JDE EnterpriseOne.
How Does AP Automation Work?
Automated invoice processing
JD Edwards AP automation simplifies the entire invoice process automation workflow, reducing manual effort to exception handling only. Upon receiving an invoice in PDF, XML, or email format, AI-driven OCR (Optical Character Recognition) automatically processes and extracts key data from the invoice.
Next, the system validates the information against JD Edwards master data and matches it to purchase orders and goods receipts. This automated matching step ensures that each invoice is accurate and ready for approval, minimizing the need for manual intervention.
The system automatically posts approved invoices within Oracle JD Edwards E1, scheduling payments according to your organization’s terms. Every transaction is logged, creating a full audit trail for future reference.
By automating these steps, SCANMAN enables truly automated AP operations, combining data capture, validation, and matching into one seamless AP automation process. The result is faster approvals, fewer errors, and complete control, a key advantage of AP Automation embedded within Oracle JD Edwards.
Embedded Solution vs Stand-alone
AP Automation without leaving JD Edwards EnterpriseOne
There are two main types of AP automation solutions: embedded and stand-alone.
An embedded solution, such as SCANMAN AP Automation for JD Edwards, is installed directly within your ERP system. It eliminates data synchronization challenges and ensures that every decision relies on a single source of truth.
Because the automation runs natively in JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, it matches data in real time against master records, increasing accuracy, removing data synchronization issues, and ultimately improving efficiency across the AP automation process.
In contrast, stand-alone solutions often require external integration with JD Edwards. This can lead to data mismatches due to delayed data updates (these systems usually update data once a day). Over time, these disconnected systems add complexity, increase maintenance costs, and raise the risk of errors.
Choosing an embedded approach ensures smooth operations, easier adoption, and complete control within your Oracle accounts payable automation environment, without leaving JD Edwards.
SCANMAN AP Automation for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne
The native accounts payable automation
If your organization relies on Oracle JD Edwards, SCANMAN AP Automation is designed specifically for you. As a native, embedded solution, it goes beyond basic invoice automation, delivering an intelligent, end-to-end process inside the JD Edwards environment.
With SCANMAN, all AP activities, from invoice capture and validation to approval and posting, happen directly within JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, with no need for external applications or data transfers. This seamless approach eliminates synchronization issues and ensures your system always reflects accurate, real-time information.
More than just automation, SCANMAN supports continuous innovation within the Oracle ecosystem. It stays fully compatible with each JDE update and release, ensuring your AP automation process evolves with your ERP, without costly integrations or downtime.
Organizations using SCANMAN AP Automation report faster invoice cycles, fewer errors, and a measurable reduction in manual work, unlocking the full potential of automated AP operations in JD Edwards.
AP Automation Key Takeaways
AP automation has become essential for organizations across all industries that aim to scale efficiently and stay competitive. By eliminating manual, paper-based workflows, you can streamline accounts payable processes, reduce costs, and gain the flexibility to reallocate resources toward higher-value work.
The impact of automated AP operations goes far beyond the AP department; it accelerates financial visibility, strengthens supplier relationships, and enables faster business growth.
If you’re using Oracle JD Edwards, see how SCANMAN AP Automation can help you achieve these results within your existing ERP environment.
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